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Thursday, 1 August 2013

X-Men: Days Of Future Past - Viral Marketing Campaign Builds Momentum

The viral marketing campaign for Bryan Singer's X-Men Days of Future Past is picking up some serious momentum with the recent launch of the excellent Trask Industries website.

The fictional company site delves into the history and mythology of Trask Industries and its creator Bolivar Trask (played by Peter Dinklage - TV's Game of Thrones). The site also explores the creation of the Sentinels from Mark I to X.

Trask's objective is to eradicate the mutant ''threat'' from society, something he feels will save the human race from the brink of extinction at the hands of the ''X-Gene''. In order to achieve this, the Sentinel program was launched in 1973.

The Sentinels are giant robots that were designed and created to hunt anyone containing the X-Gene, classified as mutants. Their primary objective is to apprehend said mutants but they are programmed to used lethal force to any who resist.

The site also boasts a very effective (albeit brief) viral promo for the Trask Industries that serves as a great pre-cursor to the underlining themes of the movie and also indicates how drastic the mutant-human divide has become.

The site is extremely convincing and a very enjoyable read for both X-Men fans and those unfamiliar with the source material.

Here are a few extracts from the site:

"As we celebrate five decades of achievement, we also bid farewell to regular production of the Mark I and shift our efforts to full-time manufacturing of the Mark X — our first complete overhaul of the Sentinel line. These highly anticipated units will combine next-generation nanotechnology and bioweapon breakthroughs, promising an even brighter future for the human race.""Our goal at Trask Industries is to be one step ahead of mutation through rigorous research and groundbreaking science. Our employees hold themselves to the highest standards, because they know that the solutions we provide represent a moral imperative to ensure the future of humanity.""For the past 50 years, Trask Industries has been tracking, studying and systematically eradicating the X-Gene worldwide. Due to the nature of its replication, the X-Gene may have been present in well over 50% of the world’s population by this point, if not for the intervention of Trask Industries. As our environment has shifted, following the exponentially increasing trend of chemicalization and radiation of the human population, the X-Gene still represents a major threat to human progress. If propagated without limit, mutation may result in the eradication of the homo sapien species by 2030."

I was originally very sceptical about the prospects of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer's insistence on casting countless numbers of X-Men characters seemed unmanageable and the film's premise seemed far too complex for one movie. However, my opinion is quickly being swayed thanks to the quality of this site and the superb end-credits scene in Fox's recent release, The Wolverine.

It seems as though this could be the X-Men film that we've all been waiting for... but we'll have to wait and see.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is due for release in the UK on 22nd May and the US on 23rd May 2014.